Sunday, May 31, 2026… Holy Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day
“You and Me and the Trinity”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 8; Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Acts 2:14a, 22-36; Matthew 28:16-20
Service Order: A Hymn Setting for Divine Service, with Holy Communion
Hymns: “Come, Thou Almighty King” #905; “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” #791;
“Glory Be to God the Father” #506; “Holy, Holy, Holy” #507; “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” #803; “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow” #805; “Sent Forth by God’s Blessing” #643
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, from our Lord Savior Jesus Christ, and from the blessed Holy Spirit. Amen.
Do you understand the Trinity? Me neither! How God can be one God, and yet exist in three Persons? “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons in one divine Being” is over my head and above my paygrade. God’s math doesn’t add up, at least not to me. (But He’s God and I’m not, so it doesn’t have to). One plus one plus one plus one equals … one! That doesn’t make sense in any mathematical system I’m familiar with; and yet we can only accept on faith that what God says about Himself is true.
Our God is transcendent, above math and science and physics and everything else. He exists above and beyond the universe as we know it. (He created the universe, after all). I was reading about how our scientists and physicists have, in the last few years, run up against a problem. The commonly accepted theory used to be that the universe was static; that is, that it exists as it always has and has never changed. Now, by their experiments in quantum physics and such, most of the “experts” have come to conclude that the universe did have a beginning, or some kind of starting point. But now they’re being forced to wrestle with the concept that if the universe had a beginning, who or what began it? Who was the beginner? What force or being or entity had the infinite power required to create a whole universe full of suns and moons and planets and stars, a universe so vast and expansive that it’s measured in light years, and crossing it would take an immeasurable, infinite stretch of time? I’m glad the scientists are starting to figure it out, but you and I have known the answer all along. A being or a mind or an existence with that amount of wisdom and power could only be called… God.
Now this God, who has done His best in His Word to explain Himself to us in a way our limited human minds can understand, describes Himself as Triune, as a Three-Person God. The best way I can come up with to describe the Trinity, is that the Triune God is like a family. Not a family in the human sense, exactly, but a perfect relationship; a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, always in perfect harmony with one another. Never arguing, never disagreeing with each other, in perfect unity, with that unity being possible because, as St. John tells us, “God is love.”
Now this is the really awesome part. You would think that such an awesome, divine, all-powerful God would want little to do with creatures like us, tucked away as we are on this tiny planet in a forgotten corner of the universe. But somehow, for some reason, the God of love loves us! In fact we are, as His Word tells us, the purpose of His creation. The God of love - that holy, Triune, family God - created all things for the purpose of adding to His family. All things were created so the Father could have children, whom He could love, and who would love Him back. And He created this little world for us to provide a place for His children to live and grow. (How God could love me is beyond my understanding, too; but I believe it because He tells me that it’s so).
The first two chapters of the Book of Genesis describe this world as God created it to be. Six days of creation, for God to set up the nursery; to provide the sun and the light, the earth and the sea, and the daily bread His children would need to live. Then God created Adam, the first man, fashioning him from the dust of the ground, and giving him life and mind and soul by breathing His own Spirit into him. And the Lord brought Eve out of Adam’s side to be his helpmate and companion. And it was good!
In Genesis, God established a divine pattern, a holy, blessed, fulfilling way of life, for Adam and Eve and you and me and all His children to live in. Those six creating days, the first six days of the week, were for doing the work the beautiful garden required. It wasn’t drudgery, though; it was good and joyful and fulfilling work, work with a holy purpose. And the seventh day, the Sabbath Day, the day of rest, was a special blessing from God to His children - six days to carry out God’s joyful work, and one blessed day to rest and worship Him.
That blessed pattern was created by God to keep His children happy and content.
Do the work God gives you to do during the week, and do it with joy and with all your heart. (The seven dwarfs had it almost right, by the way, when they sang, “Whistle while you work”; “worship while you work” is better still). And then when the work week is through, come to God’s holy Sabbath Day to get the restoration and peace your mind and food for your soul that your body needs. “If you do these things,” St. Peter says, “you will never fall.”
Adam and Eve had, from the beginning, what we call the Imago Dei, or “The Image of God.” Our Catechism describes the Image of God as: “Adam and Eve knew God as He wishes to be known, and were perfectly happy in Him.” The Lord Himself would come to walk with them in the cool of the day, and they talked to Him and He talked to them. And it was very good, and would have been forever.
Adam and Eve, we know, were given free will by God; though why God would do that, knowing what would happen, is also hard to understand. The answer to “why free will?” is that it was necessary for love to exist. Love, to be love, has to be freely given and freely received, or it wouldn’t be love at all. You can’t make somebody love you, and still have it be love.
We all know the story of what happened well enough. Adam and Eve had the ability to think for themselves and make their own choices, and they opted for the wrong. The devil came slinking into the garden, and Eve listened to his lies, and she ate from God’s forbidden tree, while Adam stood by and watched her do it. And then he ate too. And so the image of God was lost to them. They realized they were naked, and they tried to hide from God. And when God came to find them, they tried to lie to Him, and they tried to shift the blame. We read in Genesis 3: And the Lord God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So God, who still loved them, gave them animal skins to cover themselves, and sent them out of the garden and into the broken world, where their work would be hard, and where they’d come to know what grief is, and where in time they would die. But even at their downfall, God – the God of love – made them a promise: a promise to reclaim what their sin had done; a promise to send a Savior who would make all things new; a promise to one day restore the love and harmony and unity that had once existed between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and all God’s children.
God gave His chosen nation Israel His divine pattern to live in; though often they failed to do so. But He gave them morning and evening prayers and sacrifices, and He gave them their blessed weekly Sabbaths, where they could listen to the words of the patriarchs and prophets. And the blessed promise of a Savior, through them, would echo down through the years. There would also be a few good people who would be faithful to God and live in His pattern and trust in His promise. But don’t we always seem to be outnumbered?
And now we know that the Savior has come. He came to walk in a world where God’s divine and holy and blessed pattern had been all but lost. People were either ignorant of God’s Sabbath, or purposefully ignoring it, to their great harm and sorrow.
Or they’d turned the Sabbath into something it was never meant to be. Jesus’ countrymen, the Jews, had turned the Sabbath into a day for keeping a thousand rules, and for condemning those who failed to keep them - no longer a day to show an extra measure of love and grace and mercy, which is what God intended for His Sabbath all along.
Jesus told everyone, plainly and clearly, that He was the eternal Son of God, the divine Second Person of the Holy Trinity. He called Himself “I Am,” the holy name of Yahweh, Israel’s God. And He gave the doubters proof of it by miracles and signs that only God could do. And He told them that because of who He was, He had authority over all things in heaven and on earth. He even named himself as Lord of the Sabbath, when they railed at Him for healing people on the Sabbath Day. He told them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” So, as those patriarchs and prophets always said would happen, they charged Him with blasphemy and insurrection and treason and anything else they could think of. And they had Him crucified.
The promise, going all the way back to Adam and Eve, was that God would send the world a Savior; and by the blood and death of Jesus is how we were saved. His blood for ours, His life for ours. The Son of God hung on a cross, that we could be washed of our sin and forgiven and free. The Father turned away from Him, He gave up His Spirit, of His own free will, and they laid Him in a tomb.
The rest of the story, the one we Christians know and love so well, is the subject of St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2: “But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him…
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.” The Resurrection was the beginning of our restoration. It’s the beginning of the image of God beginning to be restored in us by the loving sacrifice of Christ and what He’s done for us. We get to be baptized into Christ, marked on our foreheads and hearts as belonging to Him. By Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we’re brought back by God’s grace into the family of God. “God has made this Jesus, who was crucified, both Lord and Christ."
So now what? God, from the beginning, created this world we inhabit for the purpose of creating children for Himself; and that is what He still wants of us today.
Our Gospel reading in Matthew, a very familiar passage, is what has always been called the Great Commission. It’s Jesus’ last instructions to His disciples, and to those who would follow after them; and it very much reflects the will of God for this family of His that we call the Christian Church.
“Go,” Jesus says; “Go and make disciples for Me.” Lord, how do we make disciples for You? How do we bring people to You, to learn from You and be blessed by Your Word? And the Lord answers, “Baptize them, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the name of the Triune God.” Pour on the blessed water, fill their hearts with the Holy Spirit, bring them the sacramental miracle that will bring them to born-again faith. Then teach them. Help them to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the sacred Word. Teach them what it means to eat the body and blood of Christ. And those who are filled with the Spirit will pass the Spirit to others; and those who are taught will become the ones who will teach. That’s how God’s family grows.
The Great Commission means bringing everyone we can into the divine pattern, into the life of the Trinity -- into the day by day comfort of the Presence of God, into the Sabbath to Sabbath peace that only God’s Presence can bring. Lots of people don’t know what they’re missing – but we can let them know!
May we all live in hope, and live in God’s peace, until the Lord brings us back at last to the garden. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, LCMS, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, LCMS, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com